Kanye West ruined her big moment, but her latest VMA performance (re-)stole the show — even if it wasn't the most gracious act of forgiveness in history

When pop stars take inspiration for their songs from real life, they tend to remain playfully vague about the actual subjects of their work. But Taylor Swift has consistently written songs that explicitly reference her life and the people in it. It's an approach that channels the diaristic impulses of hip-hop and the blog era, as well as the tabloid world's laser-like focus on celebrity. Her 2008 song "Forever & Always," for example, not only referenced her split with Joe Jonas, but even earned a rebuke from the heartthrob himself.

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So perhaps it was inevitable that she would dredge up the hurt from The Interruption That Made The 2009 Video Music Awards Watchable during her performance at the show's 2010 edition, on Sunday. Reports trickled out a few days before the broadcast that Kanye West, extending an olive branch after having hijacked her Best Female Video speech a year ago, had petitioned Swift to sing a duet with him at the event. Rumors then surfaced that the 20-year-old country singer turned him down, intending to perform her own song about the incident instead.

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It was in that context that Swift premiered "Innocent," which would become known as "That Song About Kanye" before she strummed her first chord. (For those who somehow missed the strategic leaks of information leading up to the broadcast and failed to make the connection, a video montage before her performance recalled the moment Kanye drunkenly cut into Swift's spotlight to express his preference for Beyoncé's "Single Ladies.")

In the plodding, pleading song, Swift seems to be doling out forgiveness from on high. "Who you are is not what you did / You're still an innocent," she sang, somewhat unsteadily, sounding a bit like a Mean Girl trying simultaneously to soothe and torment her rival.

Swift's ability to infuse the shopworn concept of the hip-hop "beef" with passive-aggressive sniping straight out of fifth-period would probably make for a great mixtape. But what's more notable about "Innocent" is that familiarity with these celebrities and their feuds is essential to understanding it. To people living in parts of the world where "Imma let you finish" jokes are banned, the song might sound like a simple lament of a lost love, or a former friend being forgiven. Lyrically, the only details from the song that seem to be directly referencing the Kanye/Taylor clash are a reference to the month of September (when the VMAs happened) and the age of 32 (West's age a year ago).

Otherwise, the subtext has to be squinted at: "Did some things you can't speak of / But tonight you'll live it all again / You wouldn't be shattered on the floor now / If only you had seen what you know now then." That lyric could just as easily be thrown out at an ex, seeing her for the first time after a bad breakup, as it could to West watching from backstage.

The schoolmarmishness of "Innocent" — really, a 20-year-old telling a 32-year-old that he's still growing up? — suggested that Swift feels a sense of satisfaction at being "the better person" and accepting West's tweeted apology to her in front of a bigger audience than the one that originally watched her humiliation live. And it provided a perfect introduction for West's show-closing number "Runaway," in which he declared, "Let's have a toast for the douchebags / Let's have a toast for the assholes / Let's have a toast for the scumbags ... Let's have a toast for the jerkoffs."

With that, Kanye replied to Swift's tartly delivered forgiveness with an extra helping of tongue-in-cheek self-flagellation that had people in the audience chanting his name as the show closed out. Who knows? Perhaps that bit of spotlight-stealing could spark another lyrical riposte from Swift, further fueling the publicity machine for the releases of both their albums this fall.

Maura Johnston is a freelance writer and editor who has worked with the Village Voice, Chicago Reader, Daily Beast, Vanity Fair, MTV.com and Newsday.